Bulgaria's withdrawal from the Teutonic block and her frank capitulation to the Allies is easily the most dramatic episode of the World War. Almost overnight the massive bridge of "Mitteleuropa" has crumbled at its central span, leaving exhausted Turkey foredoomed to speedy surrender and laying distracted Austria open to the combined assaults of Allied arms and domestic revolution. So stupendous are the possibilities flowing from the Allies' September offensive in Macedonia that we are almost tempted to believe that the age of miracles is come again. [Sidenote: The war-spirit of Bulgaria weakens.] Yet in such hours we should clarify our vision by insistent remembrance of Clausewitz's famous saying that war is but the extension of politics. For brilliant as was the Franco-Serbian escalade of mid-September, storming successive mountain walls as though they were mere trench lines and shearing through war-hardened Bulgarian divisions like a knife through rotten cheese, there was more than fighting involved. For the last year and even longer a combination of circumstances had been weaning Bulgaria from her former solidarity with the Central powers, and this disruptive process, proceeding with special rapidity during the last few months, had been steadily sapping the morale of the Bulgarian people and the war-spirit of the Bulgarian soldiery. From the broader point of view, therefore, the Allies' Macedonian offensive must be deemed not merely a skilful military operation, but even more a well-timed garnering of fruits ripe for the plucking. In such masterly combinations of strategy and politics lies the secret of decisive victory. [Sidenote: Bulgaria's political evolution.] The accurate gaging by Allied statesmanship of Bulgaria's political evolution is specially noteworthy because that evolution was both complicated and obscure. In fact, its roots reach down to the fundamental aspirations of the Bulgarian people. Bulgaria's present volte-face is no chance product of panic, but a logical step in her national policy. Its consequences thus promise to be not ephemeral, but lasting. An understanding of the factors that brought about the existing situation is therefore worth careful study. [Sidenote: The Prussians of the Balkans.] [Sidenote: Desire to attain race unity.]